Aquaphotomics for Bio-diagnostics in Dairy

Prof. Roumiana Tsenkova holds both masters and doctoral degrees in Automation Engineering from the Technical University, Rousse, Bulgaria, as well as a second doctorate in Agriculture from Hokkaido University, Japan. Her investigations in near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) started by developing a sensor for disease diagnostics (mammary gland inflammation) at Moscow Agricultural Academy of Science, Russia. In 1990, Dr. Tsenkova was awarded a Japanese Monbusho Scholarship for post-doctoral studies on sensors for robotic milking at Obihiro University, Japan and in 1992, she moved to Hokkaido University as a researcher, to develop NIRS technology for biomonitoring. In 1996 Prof. Tsenkova started working at Kobe University where, as a tenured professor, she taught Fluid Mechanics and Biomeasurement Technology. Since 2015, she serves as an adjunct professor at the prestigious Medical Faculty of Keio University in Tokyo. In April, 2021 Prof. Tsenkova founded the Aquaphotomics Research Department at Kobe University, the first such department in the world, solely devoted to the aquaphotomics studies, where she holds a position of the specially appointed professor.

Prof. Tsenkova's primary area of interest is the use of NIRS and multivariate analyses for biodiagnostics and biomonitoring related to functional studies in life science, biotechnology, and agriculture. She was the first ever to apply NIRS for disease diagnostics. In 2005, at the International Conference of NIRS, she proposed and gave a name to the new discipline called aquaphotomics as a new scientific field to study the collective characterization and quantification of pools of water molecules that have the same molecular vibration and translate into structure, function, and dynamics of organisms or aqueous systems. Her work is recognized throughout the world as attested by numerous invited talks, collaborative studies, and fifteen international and Japanese patents.Dr. Tsenkova has written more than 100 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, and received many international awards, among them the Tomas Hirschfeld Award for her work on NIRS for Disease Diagnosis and Pathogen Identification.

Dr. Jelena Muncan obtained her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering (2014) at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in the field of non-invasive glucose sensing. In 2017, she received Japanese Society for Promotion of Science post-doctoral research fellowship at Kobe University, Bio measurement Technology Laboratory of Graduate School of Agriculture where, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Roumiana Tsenkova, she was researching applications of aquaphotomics for non-invasive mastitis diagnosis in dairy cows. She is currently a specially appointed assistant professor at the Aquaphotomics Research Department, Kobe University, Japan.

Dr. Muncan's research area is very wide and highly multidisciplinary, encompassing characterization of nanomaterials/materials/biomaterials and their interaction with water, food preservation, water quality, biomedical diagnostics, monitoring, and therapy. In all these research projects, aquaphotomics plays key role. Her research efforts are directed at better understanding the role water plays in aqueous and biological systems and harvesting the new knowledge for technological applications.

Jelena Muncan is the author or co-author of more than 100 publications published in international journals and monographs as well as presented at various international conferences worldwide.